Zuckerberg, Page: NSA Has No 'Direct Access' to Facebook or Google Servers

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Zuckerberg, Page: NSA Has No 'Direct Access' to Facebook or Google Servers

Image: Courtesy of the

Washington Post

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Larry Page both denied today that they've given U.S spies access to their companies' backend servers, deepening the core mystery around the NSA's newly-disclosed PRISM program: how exactly is the NSA getting its data?

"Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the U.S. or any other government direct access to our servers" Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post this afternoon. "We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk ... We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday."

Google CEO Larry Page used similar language in a blog post earlier today.

"First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government – or any other government – direct access to our servers," read a post on Google's blog authored by Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond. "Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

The Washington Post and the Guardian revealed the existence of the top secret program in separate reports yesterday. PRISM allows NSA analysts to pry into private user messages and other data from servers of nine different technology companies, the papers revealed: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The program was reportedly begun in 2007 with a single company, and has grown steadily ever since. Both of the original news reports said that the NSA has direct access to the companies' servers, and cast the companies as voluntary participants.

But all nine companies have now denied, to one degree or another, participating in PRISM. The language in their denials seems carefully chosen, and rather similar. Zuckerberg and Page, for example, both say their companies don't give the government "direct access" to servers. Both note that they hadn't heard of a program called PRISM before yesterday. That last point isn't particularly exculpatory – there's no reason to think the NSA would share the name of its internal tools with corporate outsiders, whatever the relationship. But it seems to be a popular talking point among the nine.

As for the "direct access" line, in an update to its original story, the Washington Post wrote this:

It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers.

So now it's sounding like there's a Room 641A at each of the companies' data centers – but that's still hard to reconcile with the executives' statements, unless their words are being carefully parsed indeed. Do contractors maintain cut-out servers between Ft. Meade and the companies' systems? Does it all depend on what the meaning of "direct" is?

President Obama generally confirmed the PRISM surveillance in a public appearance in California today, emphasizing that the program is subject to court oversight (by a secret, closed-door court), and that Americans are not targeted. "This does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States," Obama said.